Letters - October 2, 2008

On behalf of the Clover Jaycees, the Town of Clover and the Clover Chamber of Commerce, I would like to thank all the citizens of Clover for attending the Fall Festival on Sept. 20. The festival was a success and could not have been made possible without community support. Many thanks also goes out to all the sponsors of the event, car show participants and vendors who helped make this one of the best festivals in recent years. We will continue to strive to make this festival one of the area's best attractions in the fall and hope that the citizens of Clover will embrace it and be a part of it for many years to come.

Heath Eubanks

Clover Jaycees President

Proper English

Democrats spent years trying to paint President George Bush as a dunce because he uses improper English and mispronounces words. Joe Biden says Republicans just aren't used to being around really intelligent people like Barack Obama. Mr. Daniel Lee Lowry of Atlanta suggests that I look up the difference between the words "ignorant" and "ignoramus." Mr. Lowry also suggests that because Barack Obama was such great shakes at Harvard, he hardly qualifies as ignorant.

Do they teach English at Harvard? I recently heard Mr. Obama end a statement with, and I quote, "no matter how it begun." I believe Mr. Lowry was right. I should have referred to Barack as an "ignoramus" rather "ignorant."

W. Gaddy Alexander

York

All right answers?

I am glad to see that the closer it gets to election time and the more opinions that are made known, there is still one person that has all the right answers and that anyone who is obviously under 80 years of age has no right to put forth their opinion about anything other than the Republican agenda because they went to an inferior school, has no clue as to what's happening in the world or is a blind mute. Thank you Mr. (Charles) Blackwell.

I say, why not come out and enlighten everyone with lessons in politics, economics and anything else that a thinking person may need to know?

John McCain wants to keep spending billions in Iraq for a war that the USA should not have been in the first place, is this right? NO! But we can't exactly just pull up stakes and leave town even though your exalted Commander-In-Chief declared "Mission Accomplished" there more than 2,000 deaths ago of our country's bravest and young men and women.

I don't think that Obama has all the right answers, nor do I think that McCain has all the right answers. All I do know is that this country needs a huge political shake-up, not some politico shouting that they are going to change things in Washington and then when they get in office it is same old business as usual. Obama doesn't have the experience for the office, and if McCain honestly thought he could change things why hasn't he done more during the 20 to 30 years that he has been in Washington?

While a lot of people on both sides of the aisle have problems with Hillary Clinton, we all know deep down that she would have been the best person for the job of President because that would have been a shake-up in politics.

Instead of telling everyone what shoddy work they have done, why their opinions are ignorant, or why only you are right and everyone else is wrong, Mr. Blackwell, why don't you enlighten us on what someone of a differing opinion from yours has done right?

Tell us something that the Democratic Party has done right or the liberals have done right.

Surely if you believe that this is a truly free country and that everyone's voice counts, as the Founding Fathers intended it to be, then you can come up with a few examples, not just conjecture and criticism.

Elton Hubbard

Clover

On school choice

Total private school enrollment in South Carolina is more than 60,000 students, or one-tenth public enrollment.

Estimates of the on-time graduation rate for students at South Carolina private schools range between 85 and 95 percent; or double the shameful public school average of 49 percent.

This massive disparity cannot be explained by differences in student composition. South Carolina's 370 private schools serve a huge range of student types, from low-income African American students in urban Catholic schools to rural white students attending small evangelical Christian schools. A wide range of secular and independent schools such as Montessori and single-gender schools exist, too.

Private schools are efficient and they graduate their students on time because they have to be.

Without the massive and politically entrenched infrastructure of district and state support, independent schools have to rely on the initiative of principals and individual teachers to understand the needs of their students and respond to them. This lower-level autonomy allows private schools the freedom to develop instruction practices dynamically, rather than implement a one-size-fits all or top-down system designed for all public classrooms in the state.

Private schools also know that if parents are dissatisfied they will withdraw their children. The ever-present threat of competition -- from other private schools as well as public ones -- fosters a level of efficiency that a public school monopoly rarely attains.

And with school choice, this private school performance helps to spur improvements at public schools through the power of competition.

The public school gains are proportional to the proximity and degree of competition they face from private schools. This has been famously shown by Dr. Caroline Hoxby, director of the Economic Education Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Because tax credits and scholarship proposals barely approach the $11,480 per pupil public school spending in South Carolina, the common public schools will also gain access to greater funding under choice plans when students transfer out. Countless state and federal allocations, such as Title I, are issued to public schools based on census data for the area they serve, not the number of students publicly enrolled. State inputs also tend to be programmatic or categorical rather than student-based.

Options for parents and competition among schools will improve instruction and leave more money for public schools. Only someone with a fanatical commitment to public schools, and no regard for individual student performance, would reject school choice outright.

Randy Page

President of South Carolinians for Responsible Government

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